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The December 12th general strike in Italy

The struggle against the Berlusconi government in Italy has
entered a new phase with the general strike called by the main trade union
confederation, CGIL, which was held on December 12th. After several
months characterised by a broad mobilisation of the youth and some layers of
workers against privatisations and cuts in the school and university system,
the working class has started to put its mark on the situation, coming out in
force.

The strike was called to protest against the government's
economic policy in the face of the present crisis. For Italian capitalism, the
world crisis comes on top of special national problems. Italy's is a declining
economy, bogged down by corruption, parasitism and backwardness. Berlusconi, in
close connection with the bosses' associations, has managed to divide the trade
union movement, winning the support of two trade union confederations, the CISL
(Christian) and UIL (left-of-centre), and "isolating" the CGIL and smaller
militant trade unions. His plan is the destruction of the national collective
bargaining system, further cuts in welfare, and further privatisations.

Success of the strike

For the CGIL leadership, this strike was an opportunity to
break out of its "isolation" and demonstrate the massive support it enjoys
among the workers. The CGIL leaders, who were prepared to sign any kind of deal
behind the workers' backs during the previous centre-left Prodi government,
tend to adopt a more militant stance when the Right is in power and, most
importantly, threatens to exclude them from negotiations. Scared of losing
control of the social forces they evoke, when they finally do call a strike,
they do so in the most cowardly manner, not as the first act of an all-out
struggle but simply as a "warning" to the government and the bosses. This was
revealed for example on the question of the duration of the strike: only 4
hours in some industries and the whole day in others.

In spite of lack of enthusiasm on the part of the union
leaders, the strike was more than justified. The social conditions in the
country are appalling, prices have increased disproportionately relative to
wages, and there is a widespread perception of a steady erosion of living
standards for the majority of the population over the last few decades.
According to a CGIL survey, at least 10,000 Italian companies are now in crisis
as a consequence of the world recession. FIAT is closing all its plants for one
month, leaving its workforce on lay-off pay. The youth is deeply affected by
this mood of pessimism about the future of the country. Earlier this year, a
right-wing paper owned by Berlusconi's brother, launched a campaign called I believe in Italy, which reveals how
worried they are about the generalised feeling of anger and lack of hope
amongst the population, feelings that can easily turn into rebellion. The
students' movement with its slogan We
won't pay for your crisis is also an expression of this.

A tragic problem that has become a rallying point for the
workers' movement is that of accidents in the workplace. Greed, lack of
controls, corruption, casual and unregistered work (especially involving
immigrants) have caused a horrifying but silent number of deaths among workers
in Italy, with 1,170 dead in 2007, and in 2008 the figure is expected to go over
the 1,000 mark again. In order to remember these working-class martyrs, CGIL members
marched during the strike rallies carrying black-ribboned flags. The students
and workers are united in their grieving, since on November 22nd, an
18-year-old student, Vito Scafidi, was killed in Turin when the ceiling of his
school collapsed because of the lack of proper maintenance due to insufficient
funding to state education.

Given this situation, it comes as no surprise that the
strike was a success. Notwithstanding the bad weather (there was an actual
flood in Rome), up to 200,000 people marched in Bologna where the national
secretary of the CGIL spoke at a rally, and other large demonstrations with
tens of thousands of workers and students took place in Milan, Turin, Venice,
Florence, Rome, Naples Cagliari and another 100 cities. Metalworkers went on
strike with participation rates over 50% in all important workplaces, and over
90% in most key factories. 45% of school workers also came out on strike.

Other smaller and more militant trade unions, like CUB,
COBAS and SdL, also joined the strike called by the CGIL calling an 8-hour
stoppage on the same day chosen by the larger confederation. This was a correct
decision that the Marxists have completely endorsed, even if these
organisations have often organised separated marches in the past on different
days, with the result that they isolated themselves from the bulk of the
workers. The same mistaken tactics were adopted by some radical youth
organisations, but in many cases the students wanted to stay with the mass of
the workers. In an attempt to separate the students from the workers on strike,
immediately before December 12th the government gave more
concessions by delaying or modifying the implementation of some particularly
controversial parts of the education reform. This did not prevent thousands of
high school and university students from taking part in the demonstrations, and
it actually revealed the weakness of the government and the possibility of a
complete victory for the movement.

The strike platform

This strike was based on a platform of demands that were far
from radical. Nonetheless, it called for the reversal of the latest attacks by
the government (the draft budget, the school and university counter-reforms,
etc.) and the launching of an emergency Anti-Crisis Plan. If this two-year Plan
were to be implemented, the union leaders claim it would boost Italian GDP by
1.5%.

This is very little compared to the shock therapy the weak
Italian economy requires. The reformist character of the proposal is also clear
when the CGIL "experts" explain where these resources would come from for such
a programme. They propose adjusting the existing budget, by using in a
different way the money currently collected through taxation and demanding a
more flexible approach from the European Union as far as limits on public debt
are concerned. In practice, this means increasing state spending without
modifying the current social structure and distribution of wealth and
accumulating even more debt (concentrated in the hands of a handful of rich
creditors, especially banks and other financial institutions, often based
abroad). It is basically good old-fashioned Keynesianism! From a Marxist point
of view, this is social democratic nonsense that cannot seriously address the
core of the problem. The capitalist economic cycle cannot be avoided, you can
only "soften" a recession by pumping in credit at the cost of making the next
crisis even more severe. The current crisis is so deep precisely because of the
excess credit of the recent period! If the workers are not to pay for the
crisis, as the slogans on the strikers' banners said, somebody else has to, and
this someone else can only be the bankers, the profiteers, the big capitalists
and landlords.

In spite of these fundamental weaknesses, the platform of
the CGIL also contained a series of demands that, while not going far enough,
still expressed in some way some vital needs of the Italian workers today. An
example of this is the call for unemployment benefit for those who are losing
their jobs as a result of the present crisis, including those who are not
currently entitled to any benefit because they have casual jobs. This demand is
a step forward, although it would be more correct to call for an end to the
casualisation of labour, a process that started under the centre-left
government without any opposition from the trade union bureaucracy.

The CGIL is demanding measures to support low-income
families and to help people pay their mortgages. The Marxists are clearly in
favour of these measures, but we would also demand a sliding scale of wages,
control on prices, the reversal of privatisations as a way to stop the increase
in fees and costs of services, and a massive plan of state-funded public
housing to provide cheap and quality housing to working class families.

The CGIL is demanding measures to support "investment", thus
delegating once again to the private sector the creation of jobs and wealth. Experience
has shown that this kind of "support" ends up just benefiting private profit
with very little (if any) accountability to the public. The state should invest
directly and under the control of the workers in projects that are socially
useful, like the building of new schools, hospitals and roads, renewable energy
sources, etc.

The CGIL correctly also includes the immigrant workers in
their list of demands, demanding citizenship rights for all clandestine
immigrants and a ban on deportation for those immigrants who lose their job
because of the economic crisis (a perverse effect of the racist Bossi-Fini
law). We agree on this, but these proposals are raised as an emergency one-off
initiative only for times of recession, while at the same time immigration
quotas are explicitly accepted by the CGIL leaders as something necessary that
needs "to be managed in a positive and more effective way". On the contrary,
immigration quotas, by establishing an artificial number of immigrants that are
going to have their human rights respected each year, force the others into the
position of illegal immigrants with no rights and highly subject to
over-exploitation and blackmailing by the bosses.

The contradictions and limited nature of the CGIL demands
clearly had an effect in limiting the enthusiasm of the CGIL rank and file
towards their own leaders. In the present crisis, the workers' movement
requires much bolder policies. And in the coming period the workers will have
no choice but to mobilise again and again, in the process building a militant
trade union leadership.

The struggle continues

The bourgeois opposition Democratic Party (PD) is not really
gaining from the movements unfolding in the country. Notwithstanding the fall
of support for the government in opinion polls on a national scale, the recent
elections in the Abruzzo region produced a majority for the right-wing
coalition. The result of the Democrats was particularly bad, but the real
winner was the numbner of abstentions, scoring an incredible 47% (turn-out at
the ballot box is usually quite high in Italy). This shows the lack of
confidence of many Italians towards mainstream politicians.

All this is not surprising, since the official parliamentary
opposition (comprising the Democratic Party and two other bourgeois parties,
since the Left was given no MPs in the last general elections) is not a genuine
opposition. In a recent discussion about raising the age of retirement for
women to 65 (it is now 60), the PD Shadow Minister for Equal Opportunities, Vittoria
Franco, who was supposed to criticise the government's attacks on the
conditions of women, has offered "an alliance" to the Right in order to get
this reactionary piece of legislation passed! No wonder people cannot see a big
difference between the cabinet presided over by Berlusconi and his friends in
the shadow cabinet.

It is the task of the most advanced wing of the trade union
movement and Rifondazione Comunista (the Communist Refoundation Party, the main
left-wing political party) to provide an alternative to the crisis of
capitalism. In this context, the FalceMartello Marxist tendency,
supporters of the International Marxist Tendency in Italy and active in
Rifondazione Comunista and the CGIL, has an important role to play in
organising the best activists of the workers' and students' movements around a
Marxist programme and the correct methods of struggle, in order to find a
revolutionary way out of the crisis.